“I… I’m sorry…”
Vick rubbed his head as he wandered around, trying not to step in any blood. Nearby was the remains of his tent and camping gear.
“Sorry for what?”
“This.”
The Ventra Expanse was normally a quiet place with no main ruling presence. While the Thantir did occasionally enter its edges and the Pentathax were wandering around, there were plenty of areas in the Ventra Expanse that were completely unpoliced and free of any kind of authority. But at the same time, it also meant that there were the occasional places that definitely weren’t safe.
While Vick had originally scoped out the area and made sure that this floating island was safe to camp on, clearly someone else had come across it in the time between Vick visiting the island the first time and visiting the island today. And that someone else was an incredibly angry Decayon pirate who had wanted to set up a base on the floating island so it could rebuild its crew.
The pirate had made one vital error though. It had attacked Vick first. It had ignored the little yellow-plated kid that was in the same tent Vick was in, because the pirate just assumed it was, well, just a kid. That error had caused the pirate to end up completely splattered across most of the floating island. Their death was pretty much instantaneous. But also rather bloody and messy.
“It’s fine. You were just protecting me.”
Arkay sat in the middle of the remains of the tent, his arms wrapped around himself. He was shivering. Not from the anguish that he and Vick had been attacked though. He wasn’t scared, he was upset.
“I didn’t have to kill them. I could have talked to them. I could… I could have done everything better in a billion different ways. But no. I killed them. They probably didn’t even have a chance to comprehend what I did.”
Vick shrugged, then sat himself down next to Arkay. “I think you’re being rather harsh to yourself. A guy broke into our tent with a shiv and tried to attack and probably kill us.”
“But I’m an all-powerful entity and I let that fucking happen!” Arkay snapped. “I’m this stupid scary monster, I occasionally borrow time powers and stuff like that, but I somehow let that bastard in and then I also utterly destroyed them when I could have talked to them and convinced them to change or something! I took the messiest path possible!”
“Um… well… maybe you actually took the best path?” Vick suggested. “I mean, you said you can do time stuff? And sometimes you do things without thinking? Maybe your subconscious already saw all this stuff happening? Maybe you saw all the paths and your subconscious decided it was better that the guy who was about to stab me while I slept should explode into a blood fountain and that he couldn’t be reasoned with?”
Arkay didn’t respond. Instead, he wrapped his arms around himself and shivered.
“Arkay, I think you did the right thing.”
“I could have done better. I didn’t have to…”
“Eh. You could have. But also that guy could have done better. He could have not attacked the guy harmlessly camping with his kid. He could have just woken us up and asked us to leave. Nope, he went straight to stabbing…” Vick paused. “Hang on, you were the god of death. You’ve killed… like… a lot…”
“I never wanted to be a bloody death god! I tried to fucking reduce deaths! But here I am, with billions dead because of me! It’s times like this where I wish I didn’t fucking exist.”
“If you didn’t exist, you wouldn’t have just saved me.”
“If I didn’t exist, you’d still be with your real family.”
Vick grunted. “That… is going too far.”
“It’s true though. Entire fucking multiverse would be better off if the uncontrollable murderous monster didn’t exist.”
“But…” Vick hesitated. “But… you and I helped save millions from the enslavement of deitics while we were mortal, and I’m pretty sure you also saved like… multiple universes multiple times. I really think you’re overreacting. Doubly so since you just saved my life.”
Arkay paused, then took a deep breath, calming himself down. “I am overreacting. Sorry. I’m just… I… I don’t like killing. I lament every time I have to do it. And I just did it again.”
Vick frowned. “It sucks. I know.”
“I ruined the trip.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did.”
“You literally saved the trip by saving my life.”
“That… is a good point…” Arkay paused again, then fell silent, sighing to himself.
Vick glanced around. After a moment, he started wandering around again, picking things up and putting them in a pile. Once he was done with that, he started making a fire and sat down next to Arkay and put an arm around him.
“You’re not a bad person.”
“I feel like one.”
“Yeah, sure, but we’re not bad people.”
“I guess…”
Vick mused to himself, then grabbed some wooden skewers. He managed to fetch an unopened bag of food, and was very pleased to see that it was a bag of marshmallows.
“You want?” Vick asked, holding the bag in front of Arkay. “We can burn the shit out of them, if you want.”
Arkay blinked, then snickered. “Yeah, I’d like one. I only like them slightly burnt though.”
“Fair enough!” Vick smiled as he handed Arkay a handful of skewers.
“Seriously, Arkay, you’re not a bad person. It’s just that people keep on trying to kill us. Sometimes that means you need to kill the people trying to kill you. And while, yeah, I did somewhat lose my first family… everyone lost their family… well, I… I have you back, at least. It’s a weird relationship but it’s one I’d like to continue to have.”
“I don’t know if I feel right about this though…” Arkay sighed. “It’s… weird…”
“Maybe? I don’t know. But we can take things slowly. In the mean time, we can just sit here and burn marshmallows together. We can clean up the mess later. Is that alright?”
Arkay relented, then took a marshmallow from Vick. “Yeah, that’s alright, I guess…”